Do Abstractions Have Politics? Toward a More Critical Algorithm Analysis

Abstract

The expansion of computer science (CS) education in K-12 and higher-education in the United States has prompted deeper engagement with equity that moves beyond inclusion towards a more critical CS education. Rather than frame computing as a value-neutral tool, a justice-centered approach to equitable CS education draws on critical pedagogy to ensure the rightful presence of political struggles-emphasizing the development of not only knowledge and skills, but also CS disciplinary identities. While recent efforts have integrated ethics into several areas of the undergraduate CS curriculum, critical approaches for teaching data structures and algorithms in particular are undertheorized. Basic Data Structures remains focused on runtime-centered algorithm analysis.We argue for a more critical algorithm analysis that centers an affordance account of value embedding. Drawing on critical traditions in science and technology studies, philosophy of technology, and algorithmic ethnography, affordance analysis examines how the design of abstractions such as data structures and algorithms embody affordances, which in turn embody values with political consequences. Through three case studies, we illustrate how affordance analysis refutes social determination of technology, foregrounds the limitations of data abstractions, and implicates the design of algorithms towards reinforcing benefits and harms along the matrix of domination.

CS Education for the Socially-Just Worlds We Need: The Case for Justice-Centered Approaches to CS in Higher Education

“…By centering runtime or space complexity analysis [28] as the primary means for evaluating data structure and algorithm tradeoffs, undergraduate computing programs emphasize efficiency as the primary (sometimes only) concern in data structure and algorithm analysis, thus marginalizing computing's ethical and social responsibilities. A more critical reading of the CS2 learning goals reveals the limits of cognitive approaches that frame "[a]lgorithm design and implementation [as] a means of realizing a specification or abstract data type without critically questioning the design of the abstraction" [8,22,25].…”

“…Ethics Critiques sociopolitical values of data structure and algorithm design [22] and dominant computing epistemologies that approach social good without design justice [8]. Identity Centers students in culturally responsive-sustaining pedagogies [9] to resist dominant computing culture and value Indigenous ways of living in nature [3].…”

“…CCDSA engages ethics in CS2 with an affordance analysis of data structures and algorithms [22]: a more critical algorithm analysis that draws on "critical methods from science and technology studies, philosophy of technology, and human-computer interaction" in order to evaluate the political consequences of data structures and algorithms in social contexts and applications [22]. Unlike dominant approaches to "algorithm analysis" that emphasize the internal implementation of data structures and algorithms [28], affordance analysis emphasizes the external interface of data structures and algorithms as they are applied in real-world applications.…”

“…priority queues) as they are applied to problems (e.g. content moderation) by emphasizing how the design of an abstraction encodes affordances that can have political values [22]. While comparison between data structures and algorithms on the basis of efficiency are important, CCDSA emphasizes critical comparison between abstractions on the basis of their sociopolitical implications.…”

“…However, CCDSA is not satisfied with affordance analysis alone. Although affordance analysis makes space for sociotechnical critique of the design of software solutions, "it is inherently limited to the algorithmic components of a sociotechnical system" and provides less instruction toward "redressing design values" [22], engaging epistemological limitations [25], or reauthoring political relationships through CS [6,39]. Costanza-Chock argues for practices that move beyond the "universalizing assumptions behind affordance theory" and instead attend to design justice that pushes students to "think more critically about software, technology, and design [.…”